Contribution to the Reverse Engineering of OO Applications Methodology and Case Study

While database reverse engineering is getting mature, trying to recover the semantics of recent OO applications seems to trigger little interest. The reason is that the problem is underlooked because OO programs should be written in a clean and disciplined way, and based on state-of-the-art technologies which allow programmers to write auto-documented code. The paper is an attempt to explain why the reality is far from this naive vision. Mainly through a small C++ case study, it puts forward the main problems that occur when trying to understand actual OO applications. The example is processed through a generic reverse engineering methodology which applies successfully to OO programs, thanks to logical and conceptual OO models that can precisely describe object structures at any level of abstraction. As a synthesis of this case study, the paper discusses the techniques and tool support that are needed to help analysts in reverse engineering the object structures of OO applications.